Mud! Mud! Mud!

Fun! Fun! Fun!

I was kinda dreading this race on Saturday given the weather forecast (rain/snow mix with high winds) and the driving rain/sleet pelting my windows all night long on Friday evening. The sound of the sleet and rain kept waking me up, and I kept thinking “I’ve gotta get up and run in this stuff in a few hours.” I was pleasantly surprised to see sunshine on Saturday morning! Drove up to Milaca and got there in plenty of time for the 10 am start. Ended up sitting in my car for a little bit just to stay out of the cold wind. Ran into Bryan, Wayne and Kate before the start, and learned that we have another taker or two for the Minnesota Trail Race Series!

I’d never run this race before, so I was listening intently to the race director give incredibly detailed descriptions about the course. Basically, tie your shoes tight so you don’t lose them in the mud, there is some deep water in places (should I have brought a snorkel?), tight switchbacks, etc. His descriptions were spot on! We were led across a bridge over the Rum River to the start on a dirt road before heading up a short, steep, muddy bank into single track in the woods. Not terribly technical, but there were a few roots and rocks tripping people up. The tight turns made it difficult to run very fast, but I was just enjoying my romp through the woods.

A jump over a small stream (I didn’t quite make it), flat trek around the reservoir, and back into more single track in the woods for some serious….and I mean serious….shoe stealing mud. Noticed a pair of abandoned sneakers laying to the side of the trail shortly after a bridge crossing. More mud. Knee deep water on top of the mud. Pretty tough to run at all in this slop. Noticed an occupied bald eagle nest at the half way point - very cool. More tight turns in ankle deep mud. This was fun - like being a kid again! Eventually we came out into a pine forest and then a clearing along the Rum River where Wayne had come back to cheer us on after finishing himself. Over another bridge and into the finish.

In addition to Bryan, Wayne, and Kate, I ran into Steve and Keith after the race. We were all huddled trying to stay out of the wind as the race director announced winners for each age group and distributed door prizes. Keith scored some home made pecan chocolate bark, Wayne got a martini mix, and Kate got the coveted pink garden hose. Unfortunately, Steve rolled his ankle pretty bad and will be forced to taper for next weeks 50 miler at Ice Age Trail - hope he is a fast healer. Jean won awards for men, women, and door prizes but must have bailed before the post race festivities got started. He has a picture of his socks after the race on his blog - that’s what my socks looked like AFTER I did laundry (did I mention it was muddy?).

The volunteers were top notch and well prepared. This was really a fun little race and I will definately be back! Congratulations to RD John O and his crew for a great Runnin’ in the Ruff

Kel Doyle North Woods Trail Running

Kokoda Challenge 2007 - Team Sub20

14 July 2007

Friday night found me spending a restless night in the Spartan but convenient accommodation of the Numinbah Environment Centre. It was cold as a fridge in the cabin, a ten sleeper, on my own - I made no impact on the warmth in the room at all.

I dressed in fairly light clothes for the morning - a running teeshirt, shorts, gaiters and a pair of Asics Trabucos literally straight out of the box. They felt comfortable, just like my Kayanos, and I had a backup pair of broken-in shoes at the cabin (the site of checkpoint six and eight) just in case. I did the usual pre-race grease of all the potential chafing points, and used plenty on my feet. From bitter experience I know that my curled under toes get blistered tips.

After a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee I was off to meet the team at the finish line, where we would all pile into Dave’s car and head to the start line. The start was chaos with nowhere near enough convenient spaces for 167 teams and their crews. Plan to get there early if you’re doing this next year.

Anyway I finally met Jackie and Ryan, having had my first run with David only a week prior. Amazingly Jackie’s longest race so far was a half marathon! She proved later in the day and half of the night that she’d been putting in the hard yards in training. Ryan, fresh from his debut marathon at the Gold Coast looked fit also. I hoped that I’d be able to keep up with these young whippets. Eventually we headed to the start line and after the speeches from Kokoda Track veterans and a rendition of The Last Post, we were off.

The first few km were run along footpaths just getting from the town square to the bush. In a way it was very good because there was no pushing or queuing (at least for us) once we got into the scrub. It was all very pleasant, running through dappled light in the forest and some minor hills behind Mudgeereba.

It wasn’t long before we were running some real hills. Well, our plan (which we stuck to pretty well) was to walk up the hills strongly and run the flats and downs. When you see some of these hills, you have to wonder how fast the leaders could possibly go up them. Which leads to the further question - did they break any speed limits going down them to finish with such a fast overall pace?

From the outset I was taking a salt capsule every hour. This proved insufficient given our work rate and my sweat output, and after about four hours my fingers were starting to swell. Although this isn’t a bad thing, the accompanying swollen toes can lead to blistering and blackened toe nails so I upped my consumption to about three every two hours. That kept the puffy fingers in check for the rest of the race and kept me peeing regularly enough. I didn’t end up with any blisters at all and didn’t suffer from even the tiniest cramp.

The new Trabucos were proving to be a great shoe, with plenty of traction giving me tons of confidence running fast downhill and also stopping me slipping and sliding on the dirt and boulder strewn upward slopes. The worst of these hills were two or three kilometres long steep and rutted, with fist sized boulders and gravel strewn over them. They took a lot of getting up, and were relentless. I soon lost count of the number of them.

Ryan started to fade after a while, particularly going up the steeper hills, with quadriceps pain and shortness of breath. He eventually, and reluctantly, pulled the pin after completing the first five sections, and although it was disappointing for us all it is probably better than having to explain to your missus why we let you ride home in an ambulance.

From there the pattern seemed to be overtake a couple of teams on the runs, lose a couple of places on the breaks. We could have gone faster at the checkpoints, but would we have been as well rested? I don’t know. We probably spent about two hours in total at checkpoints. But the three of us started running stronger and stronger, and were really putting some distance into the other teams on the trail.

At checkpoint eight we changed into warmer night gear and donned headlights before heading out into the dusk. I changed into NB767s with a much wider toe box, mostly because the underside of my feet were feeling a bit bruised from the stiff Trabucos. The night saw us running very well, and we gained eleventh place several times only to lose it again at checkpoints. Checkpoint twelve saw us (in twelfth place), eleventh place and tenth place separated by fifty metres or less on the way out. By this stage of the race Jackie was getting pretty sore in the quads and smashed toes from all of the downhills, Dave was having difficulty with hydration and not urinating, and I was a bit hypoglycaemic, even though I thought I was stuffing the carbs in. After walking up one hill, Dave and I had Salt capsules and I got some gel in myself. Bingo, in five minutes I went from dizzy and shuffling to clear-headed and running strongly again.

We diced with a couple of teams for the next hour or so, but then just around checkpoint thirteen we exploded into life, and finally went from twelfth place past one team after another, crossing the line in seventh place overall. We weren’t a complete team, unfortunately, with Ryan pulling out with injury and illness, but from checkpoint five we had stuck together every step of the way and done it all as a team. And while Nike Hammer may have been the first mixed team across the line, Jackie ran the race of her life to come home faster than last year’s best female by more than four and a half hours. She ran faster than the team that won this race the year before. So only an Olympic marathoner can say they’ve beaten Jackie Appleyard on this course! That’s a pretty good ultra début.

What worked:
Crew - good humoured and fabulous. Crew can make or break a team or individual event.
Gels - I can’t stomach the sweet taste of _____ade so could only drink them half strength. This doesn’t provide enough carbs to keep running.
Succeed Caps - no blisters, no potty problems, no cramps.
SportShield - No blisters or chafing anywhere.
Running Funky Tights - warm, comfortable, loud.
[Loud tights]

What didn’t:
Food - I hardly worked up an appetite at all during the race - the most substantial thing I had was chicken soup at CP8 and Maggi Noodles at CP10. I think I’ll only pack them, and gels next time.
Hat and headlight - too cold to do without a hat, I think I’ll use a head-wrap-thing like AB did at Glasshouse. I got bad tunnel vision effect several times from the shadow of the brim.

Unsure:
The time in the checkpoints - like I said, we probably spent two hours in the checkpoints. I don’t know whether we would have been as fast running on less rest, or whether we were just too slow for our own good. Only doing it again will tell

Francis Harvey
QLD, Australia

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Top trail runners Karl Melzer and Scott Mason talk about how to be more efficient running downhill.

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